Business Schools Focus on Performance and Its Effects in Modern Day Commercial Discourse - Essay Example

Business Schools’ Focus on Performance and its Effects in Modern Day Commercial Dis Introduction One of the worst financial issues ever to occur in the globe was the global financial crisis that took its peak between late 2007 to the year 2009. A financial crisis could be defined as a situation that demands more money than could be raised. Prior to the recession, there were already signs of it impending, and this was due to the then global financial crisis that was on going. There were massive fallouts in financial calamities in the United States of America, a superpower, inflated commodity costs, increasingly limited policies to access of money in many states, instability in the housing mortgage institution in large economies that included the United States, and volatility in major stock markets. The above scenario was a major cause for the collapse of major companies in the world, especially financial institution, which had risked so much while practicing securitization. Other major institutions had to sellout cheaply, losing real value of what they were worth (estimated to be about $14.5 trillion in the U.S). Governments of some of the most powerful nations, also had to come to the rescue of some of the major business institutions by dishing out rescue packages that included huge sums of money to bail out the sinking giants (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1998). Business schools are the major institutions in the world that produce some of the financial gurus this world has to offer, and had to offer back then even before the global financial crisis. The blame can thus be entirely attributed to them for not imparting enough knowledge or rather, teaching irrelevant and impractical lessons to students who hold the future of the economy of the world upon them. Criticism should thus be appreciated by these business schools and an objective to improve should be the target. Sumantra Ghoshal, a great business academician, since passed on, was one critique of the business schools and optimistically believed that the situation could be reverted or changed to offer improved and practical knowledge that would assist financial professionals be able to solve practical problems. In order to build a foundation that could avoid future financial crisis business schools globally have the responsibility to improve their curriculum to focus on more practical financial scenarios in the world rather than focus on performance. Role of Business Schools Any critique that could follow without the declaration of the real roles of business schools towards the modern day commercial discourse could be absolutely null and void. Below are some of the roles that Sumatra Ghoshal defined that Business schools have towards the contribution to a better business world. Business schools have the obligation of instilling ethics to its students. Business ethics define the behavior that business parties should exhibit when dealing with matters that concern business. Ethics are responsible in inhibiting vices such as corruption, theft and general inappropriate characters in many business organizations. The other key role that business schools face is the responsibility to bring out a complete economic with the ability to deal with current business matters. Knowledge would be absolutely useless without the practical knowhow. Management research issues and internships fall in this category as they form the main parts in business schools responsible for practical knowledge. Business schools have the responsibility to impart to their students the mental capacity to apply knowledge imparted. Education is mostly done in a theoretical method, but such knowledge imparted should be focused on dealing with the real world situations in the contemporary world. Lack of the ability to apply knowledge would prove the hopelessness in business schools, a fact that Ghoshal, a great critique, wouldn’t want to believe was he still alive. Business Schools’ Target on Performance Content rather than Educational Content According to Sumantra Ghoshal, business schools contain so many irrelevancies in their curriculum that they need to stop doing in order to thwart prospective Enron scenarios. Enron was one of U.S’s biggest fraud case ever experienced to presence. Enron was an energy and utility trading company that knowingly inflated their revenues in order to manipulate share trade and other investment deals. Its discovery later brought down its share in the market to a low of $0.30 from $85. Most of the irrelevancies experienced result from the objective of most business institutions to perform rather than teach. This causes many scenarios where curricula is shallow and focuses more on the theoretical part, an issue that usually encourages drilling. This section of the paper shall identify some of the factors that demonstrate business schools focus more on the performance factor rather than imparting knowledge. One of the mistakes that business schools and the curricula does is the steady foundation that these schools have in past business ideologies created by academicians from what we could comfortably describe as the financially archaic world. Examples of such financial ideologies include those concerning managerial management, control of employees on opportunistic characters, competition and other theories of management that are so archaic, with some as old as forty years old. Thousands of current executives and people at the managerial level have used the same knowledge as long as they passed through the said business schools (Ghoshal 2005). A change on such curriculum could be chaotic in that both lecturers and students would have to adopt the new system before commencing with a smooth learning system. This fluctuation would foster poor performance and thus emphasis is put in the older curriculum that both staff and students are more accustomed. The financial world in the contemporary world compared to the old financial world is extremely on the other side of the two different worlds. The same way that technology is, so dynamic, so are business scenarios and environment. Using old ideologies to teach economists, or managerial students that would guide future economies would thus be compared to the biblical old skin and new wine proverb. The old theories and ideologies have, in fact, become a cliché and thus many individuals who may have not even passed through business schools have the ability to act in the same way given the observations they might have encountered from generations of managers. Another current trend at many business schools is the current shady affairs that involve management research. Many management research activities have been fed to students in the form of the perception that managers are seen operating in the current financial world. This is one very wrong perception being given to business students given the assumption that is given to the existing managers and their capability in performing optimally. Adoption of these theoretical research assumptions turn business students into zombies whose objective is to fall into the shoes of their predecessors and continue in the same way they were conducting business, regardless of whether wrong or right. Business research has gradually assumed a scientific model of research, and given the diversity that these two fields have there is no chance that standards results would be acquired in business research. Science, especially biological, physical and chemical sciences, excluding technology, is quite static and would most probably produce the same results over a long period. Contrarily, business is dynamic, and its dynamism is emphasized more on the various environments that business could be done. This somehow put the researchers at the risk of acquiring a “false” knowledge illusion. This trend should instead be replaced by the teaching of more practical examples that would be more adoptive and challenging. This would increase the moral responsibility of students in carrying out financial or economic obligation as dictated by ethical standards. (Hayek, 1989). Sumantra Ghoshal goes against this trend and his critique could not be any wrong. Uses of such archaic models of research survive for the fear of the complexity involved in current models. The fear, encompassed with the fear of failure, thus promote the use of such models that would ensure students have an easy time to perform well (Ghoshal 2005). Methodologies used in most business schools have adopted teaching styles of most Science subjects. This is an approach that is specifically designed to impart knowledge in fields only related to science and thus ignore major lessons that business studies entails. Scientific methodologies of teaching usually disregard the essence of morality and ethics. Ethics and morality are two significant aspects that comprise business skills and knowledge. The exclusion of these would develop business experts that would ignore ethical values and morality that govern the business world. Such individuals would usually mismanage staff and further go ahead to do some activities that usually are prohibited by ethical rules governing business. Scientific models also emphasize more on the part of drilling where a student would understand a certain concept from a single perspective given the static nature of science. Business, unlike sciences, has a completely different scenario; one that is so dynamic, history hardly explains any situation. There is thus only one reason this could happen; to enhance performance. Scientific research methods have, however, few advantages that include deep analysis that usually results to comprehensively conclusive outcomes in any given business research. This advantage would, however, prove costly as many tools and research assistants are required to carry out a complete business research activity. Curriculum in business school is biased on the emphasis of conceptual facts about business than human beings. One main reason for this could be the dynamism and diversity of humans. The general business environment defines money, services, goods, other economic variables and most of all and usually the most forgotten player, human beings. Most business teachings ignore anything to do about people, and if they are included, only negative assumptions would be declared against them so as to factor them in a situation to solve problems. Ignoring this important factor can sometime make a business studies academician forget his or her own personality, and concentrate more on the financial and economic aspects. The personal relation and general conduct of such individuals end up having very business-unlikely behaviors, and the experts exhibiting these traits are most likely to mess along their careers. Business schools’ emphasis on this could also be to avoid the complexity that humans play in business. This could make it easier for the students to comprehend as the content of conceptual factors is simple. Prior to the global financial crisis, business figures in influential positions independently supported ideologies and business models that no one else could question nor oppose. They thus implemented ideologies into practical activities without the acknowledgement of other team members that were not vocal. This was done in a rush and considerably disobeyed ethical rules that govern business. At first, these ideologies seemed great, but eventually, everything came down and all the blames were misdirected to sometimes individuals who were never involved in the implementation of a paradigm of business practice. The crisis thus ended up being blamed on uninvolved individuals just because of the irresponsibility, irrationality and unethical character of a few individuals (Bruch and Ghoshal 2002). The last assumption that most business schools make is that of teaching ethics. Business studies have ethics as one of the major units to be taught alongside other units. Ethics can be defined as sets of rules that guide a select group in the way that they are supposed to relate and behave. Business requires ethics as it is always dealing with various parties in order for business deals to be completed. A considerable mistake done by the business lecturers is the assumption that ethics, encompassed with morality are natural, psychological phenomena that would naturally exist even without imparting of knowledge of any manner. This has misguided them by making them put extremely little emphasis on this aspect of business. Students passing through these institutions are thus less likely to exhibit any ethical values and morality. This is with no doubt, paving a way for another Enron case. Business without ethics and morality usually result to corrupt deals, irresponsibility, unaccountability, carelessness, shady deals and general chaos. Business Schools’ Solutions to Practical Knowledge The pathetic condition that business schools exhibit, a fact stated by Sumantra Ghosal, ironically a former Business School Dean in the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, could ,however, be improved. There is still great hope for transforming the institutions that bear the responsibility to bring up future business leaders. This section of the paper shall discuss some of the ways he proposed, plus other additional methodologies that could be implemented to achieve this feat. Putting ethics and morality units in high priority in business schools would greatly improve the quality that business schools produce. Ethics, as previously defined in this paper, should be understood as a way that fosters better relationship and practice rather than dictatorship that would tie the free will many humans are accustomed. Ethics would ensure great business individuals’ personality and identity. One of the major ways that business schools would ensure this is by limiting the extent to which they were viewing business studies as a science. Science disregards ethics, or rather, puts ethics at a negligible position. With the implementation of this, ethics and morality would be better taught, of course with an emphasis to the relationship it has to business (Ghoshal, Hahn, and Moran 1999). Another chief way that business schools would improve their honest service towards business students would be the abandonment of the old curriculum in favor of a newer curriculum. This would entail a revision of the business curriculum and need be, the halting of teaching some irrelevant units or modules. Having a better focused curriculum would bring the learners to a more realistic scenario of the contemporary world. This would impart the knowledge and skill that these students require to deal with current problems that would relate to business. Would this have been the case some time before the global crisis, there was a high chance that the crisis would have been averted from an earlier stage that would ensure no global financial crisis. The world would have been a better place, because even at present, the financial and economic state, especially of developed countries, is still recovering from the recession recently experienced. In the same way, multibillion frauds such as Enron and Tyco would have been mere nightmares in the business world. An emphasis to proper management research should be made. Management research usually plays a big role in ensuring that business students acquire that practical skill that would take them out to the real world. Such research would be likened to the intensity that most science-based research activities are carried out. Scientific research usually has more critical analysis that include causal clarifications, intentional justifications, and functional explanations. Research comprehensively carried out this way would eliminate any chances of knowledge pretense, murky or superficial vision of ideologies, assumptions, especially to the people involved, and predetermined theory that would be completely irrelevant to a given scenario. Proper management research would absolutely be a key phase in directing the business students into the actual world, and thus there is a low probability of them being overwhelmed by the scenario out there. The last model that would ‘reverse the trend’ as Ghosal declared would be the ignoring of unjustifiable management theories. Though Ghosal does not dismiss the availability of good management theories he greatly fears the existence of management theories, and cries foul of the tremendous negative effects that It has had towards good management practice. The existence of negative management theory is blamed on two scenes, where poor management research is one cause and the issue of assumptions over human fault, the other cause. These two lead to the conclusion of many issues that usually results to wrong management theories. It is, therefore, proposed that only justified management theories are adopted by business schools in order to impart only the right knowledge to business students. Conclusion Many educational institutions have of late been more focused on performance rather than knowledge impart. This has caused great weaknesses in these institutions that curricula edge more on the theoretical part rather than practical. Business schools have not been an exception. The main intent is usually institutional marketing for it to get more admissions. This is one very wrong factor that should be reverted in modern-time education systems. Sumantra Ghoshal did not make a far fetched claim when he declared that, business schools had to improve their quality in order to produce quality professionals. Ironically, he was a Dean of School of business, yet he had the guts to criticize the same field that gave him a living. This shows how much honesty he had in the claim. Business schools have the obligation to review most of their curricula. Such would include ethics, managerial research, and the human factor in business among many others. Reference List Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. 1998 Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution. London, Random House. Ghoshal, S. 2005 ‘Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices’, Academy of Management Learning and Education, vol. 4 no. 1, pp. 75-91 Ghoshal, S., Hahn, M., and Moran, P. 1999 ‘Management Competence, Firm Growth and Economic Progress’, Contributions to Political Economy, vol. 18, pp. 121–150. Bruch, H. & Ghoshal, S 2002, ‘Beware the Busy Manager’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 80, no. 2, pp. 62–69 Read More